Signs of progress in Baghdad amid security crackdown

Published 5:30 am, Thursday, March 15, 2007

BAGHDAD — Bomb deaths have gone down 30 percent in Baghdad since the U.S.-led security crackdown began a month ago. Execution-style slayings are down by nearly half.

The once frequent sound of weapons has been reduced to episodic, and downtown shoppers have returned to outdoor markets — favored targets of car bombers.

There are signs of progress in the campaign to restore order in Iraq, starting with its capital city.

U.S. military officials, burned before by overly optimistic forecasts, have been cautious about declaring the operation a success. Another reason it seems premature: Only two of the five U.S. brigades earmarked for the mission are in the streets, and the full complement of American reinforcements is not due until late May.

Gone are the "illegal checkpoints," where Shiite and Sunni gunmen stopped cars and hauled away members of the rival sect — often to a gruesome torture and death.

The rattle of automatic weapons fire or the rumble of distant roadside bombs comes less frequently. Traffic is beginning to return to the city's once vacant streets.

In the months before the security operation began Feb. 14, police were finding dozens of bodies each day in the capital — victims of Sunni and Shiite death squads. Last December, more than 200 bodies were found each week — with the figure spiking above 300 in some weeks, according to police reports compiled by The Associated Press.

Since the crackdown began, weekly totals have dropped to about 80 — hardly an acceptable figure but clearly a sign that death squads are no longer as active as they were in the final months of last year. On Wednesday, 39 Iraqis were killed or found dead nationwide.

Bombings too have decreased in the city, presumably because of U.S. and Iraqi success in finding weapons caches and to more government checkpoints in the streets that make it tougher to deliver the bombs.

"I would caution everybody about patience, about diligence," U.S. spokesman Maj. Gen. William C. Caldwell said Wednesday. "This is going to take many months, not weeks, but the indicators are all very positive right now."

Elsewhere, thousands of cheering Kurds gave Iraqi President Jalal Talabani a hero's welcome home in Sulaimaniyah from 17 days of medical treatment in Jordan. Doctors said he suffered from exhaustion and dehydration caused by lung and sinus infections.

The U.S. military reported that three American soldiers were killed Wednesday by bombs or gunfire in Diyala province northeast of Baghdad and that a Marine died Tuesday during combat in Anbar province.